Robyn Lynne Norris’s free-form satire makes its premiere that is off-Broadway at Westside Theatre.
Go on it from the veteran: on the web suuuuucks that are dating. Yes, apps like OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge reduce regarding the awkwardness that is included with approaching possible love passions in individual and achieving to discern a person’s singlehood into the first place. But placing apart the reality that perhaps the many algorithm that is complexn’t constantly anticipate in-person chemistry, forcing potential daters to boil on their own right down to a self-summary leads people to not merely placed across an idealized form of by themselves for general general general public usage, but in addition encourages individuals to latch on the many surface-level aspects to quickly see whether someone’s worth pursuing romantically. For females especially, online dating sites could even be dangerous, making them available to harassment or even even even worse from toxic males whom feel emboldened by the privacy of this Web.
Yet, internet dating remains popular, hence rendering it a target ripe for satire. Enter #DateMe: an experiment that is okCupid. Conceived by Robyn Lynne Norris, who cowrote the show with Bob Ladewig and Frank Caeti, and located in component on her behalf very very own experiences, the job is simply a sketch-comedy that is extended, featuring musical figures, improvisatory sections with market involvement, and interactive elements (the show features its own OkCupid-like software that everybody is encouraged to install and create pages on prior to the show). In place of a plot, there is a character arc of types: Robyn (played in this premiere that is off-Broadway Kaitlyn Black), finding by by by herself forced to test OkCupid the very first time, chooses to see just what is most effective regarding the software by producing 38 fake pages. If it appears overzealous, a few of her guidelines — including never ever fulfilling some of the individuals she converses with online — declare that this alleged test has been made to fail through the outset. The cynicism and despair underlying Robyn’s overelaborate ruse is sporadically recognized through the show, with components of pathos associated with tips of a troubled romantic past and recommendations that she’s got difficulty making deep connections with individuals as a whole peeking through the laughs.
For the part that is most, however, #DateMe is content to keep a frothy tone while doling away its insights.
Robyn’s findings of seeing a number of the exact same expressions and character characteristics on profiles result in faux-educational sections where the other countries in the eight-member cast, donning white lab coats (Vanessa Leuck designed the colorfully diverse costumes), break people on to groups. also the creepiest of communications Robyn gets on OkCupid are turned into cathartically songs that are amusingcompiled by Sam Davis, with words by Norris , Caeti, Ladewig, and Amanda Blake Davis). And in case any such thing, the two improvisatory segments — one in that the performers speculate how a date that is first two solitary market users would get centered on their pages and reactions with their concerns, one other a dramatization of an audience user’s worst very very first date — turn into the comic shows of this show (or at the very least, they certainly were during the performance we went to).
It surely assists that the cast — which, along with Ebony, includes Chris Alvarado, Jonathan Gregg, Eric Lockley, Megan Sikora, Liz Wisan, Jillian Gottlieb, and Jonathan Wagner — are highly spirited and game. Lorin Latarro emphasizes a feeling of playfulness inside her way and choreography, particularly with a group, created by David L. Arsenault, that mixes the aesthetic of living spaces and game programs; and projections by Sam Hains that infuse the show utilizing the appropriate sense of multimedia overload.
#DateMe is really so entertaining into the minute that just do you realize afterward just exactly just how trivial its view of internet dating in fact is. Because of this audience at the least, it had been disappointing to see the show’s blind spot in terms of battle and exactly how discrimination nevertheless plays away on dating apps today. As well as on a wider degree, the show does not link the increase of dating apps to your predominance of social media marketing most importantly, motivating a change more toward immediate gratification than in-depth connection. Similar to of the very very first times dating apps will likely deliver you on, #DateMe: An OkCupid test provides a perfectly enjoyable break without making you with much to remember after it is over.